This invention relates to devices for laying submarine cables, and more particularly to a specific device which is towed along the bottom of the sea and adapted to lay the cable in a buried manner.
Known is a device having cable depressing wheel means and adapted to force a submarine cable to be buried into the bottom of the sea. Such a device is connected to an end of a towing and controlling cable and towed by a cable laying ship along the bottom of the sea. The device comprises, beside of the cable depressing wheel, an arm for hoisting and descending the cable depressing wheel, a mechanism for operating the arm, and a plow secured to the bottom of the device. A submarine cable, which has repeaters and joining portions, is guided within a cable guide provided in combination with the towing and controlling cable between the device and the cable laying ship. When the cable laying ship advances at a predetermined speed, the plow of the device digs a trench in the bottom of the sea. Simultaneous therewith, the submarine cable is paid out from the ship, sent through the cable guide, dropped into the trench, and forced into a depth by means of the depressing wheel. Each time when the repeaters pass through the depressing wheel, the latter is temporarily hoisted under the remote control from on board of the cable laying ship, and then is descended to depress the cable again.
Thus, in the above described conventional device for laying submarine cable, it has been required to detect the passage of the repeaters through the depressing wheel by means of, for instance, a submersible television of a hydrophone, and to manually operate a control device on board of the cable laying ship thereby to drive the wheel hoisting arm. Such a procedure makes it difficult to bury a part of the cable neighboring the repeater of the cable into a predetermined depth.